PCT 2105 Pack Surgery

While I am finalising my gear for the fast approaching hike I have been scrutinising every gram I will be carrying. I know the gear I carry will change to some degree while hiking, I may send some things home or pick others up and that's fine but I am fairly confident that my previous experience has given me a good lead in knowing what is and isn't vital or at least useful for me. Having said that, I am in no way an expert nor am I in the ultralight camp. The gear I have chosen has been subject to my budget and a compromise between weight and durability. 

As for my pack, I have gone with the Platatac Trakpak, which is made for an Australian company by Tatonka. The pack was designed and made for Australians wishing to follow in the Digger's footsteps (in 1942) along the Kakoda trail in PNG. It is by no means an ultralight pack coming in at 2.4kgs but was half the weight of my previous pack - a Macpac Torre. While I still love the old Torre and have done many kilometres with it I wanted to try and at least halve the weight of my aging gear. 

I have been using the Trakpak for a couple of months now on my training walks and while I love the pack I realised I could shave some weight off by doing a bit of surgery...

The Trakpak on the operating table just before surgery.

From using the pack I noticed two ways I could save a bit of weight. One was to trim the length of the straps. They were obviously made with a 'one size fits all' philosophy and me being average build meant that there was a lot of strap just flapping around all over the pack. The second way was to remove the internal wall that made the pack into a two compartment pack. This wall could be zippered open anyway and I am used to using a one compartment pack so it went too. 

Here are the parts removed from the pack:

I included my good ol Spyderco Military which did the surgery. Knife people will appreciate that! :-)

After putting the removed parts on the scales they totalled 135gms. This might not seem much but to give some perspective it is almost twice the weight if my stove (an MSR microrocket 73gms) and almost half the weight of my silnylon tarp which is 250gms. So while I didn't put my pack on today for my training hike and think 'ahh light' I have shaved some weight off and it all adds up. 

In hindsight I might have been better off buying a lighter single compartment pack  in the first place. However, my desire to support both an Australian company and their efforts to kit people out who want to walk the Kakoda trail won out and I am proud of that!